At the same time, I was asked to speak at the AGM of the Bendigo Chaplaincy Committee, a band of stalwarts who support the various chaplains in Bendigo. Here’s part of what I said, and you can read the whole speech here:

Charles Taylor, author of “A Secular Age”, puts it like this:

The shift to secularity…consists…of a move from a society where belief in God is unchallenged and indeed, unproblematic, to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace.

Our culture’s whole approach to religion has changed: in our public spaces, in our individual beliefs, and in the soil in which faith takes root. Most of us are conscious of these changes, but our minds haven’t caught up with the reality. So, in some way, our minds still operate in the past, where God was central. But the rest of our culture is living in a different world.

What do these changes mean for chaplains? Chaplains mostly know these things – I’m saying them because chaplains rely on us, and we need to have a realistic view of the context they work in, and realistic expectations of what they can achieve.

1. God and public space: Chaplains used to occupy public space in schools through sermons at Easter and Christmas, Christian reflections in school newsletters and the like. As a teenager at a state school, I clearly remember the chaplain preaching at Easter and Christmas, and as a primary school student, being taken to the local church for an Easter service. Now, it’s becoming rarer for chaplains to give a Christian message at state school assemblies, as was once common. We can’t expect our chaplains to publicly proclaim the Christian message in compulsory school activities. We can’t expect Christians to be given privileged access to schools simply because we are Christians. That time is going and will soon disappear.
2. Individual Belief and Practice: when few people believe or practice a religion, is there a place for chaplains to foster religious practice in schools? When parents are not religious themselves, is it ethical for a chaplain to encourage religious practice in young people and children? In any case, chaplains are not building on a foundation of familiarity with the stories of Abraham & Jesus. More likely they are confronting an ignorance of these. We can’t expect chaplains to spend lots of time discipling young people, producing biblically literate young people
3. The atmosphere of belief: it is difficult for chaplains to encourage belief in a context where belief is now seen as odd, and unsupported by the majority of institutions in our country. Chaplains now have to rediscover what it means to create soil in which the seeds of faith can grow. That is a hard task, because we haven’t had to do it before.

I interviewed him the next morning about himself and his thinking on this subject. I’ll use some of this on my upcoming radio show (30th May, 6-8pm, streaming at phoenixfm.org)

You can also subscribe to my podcast on iTunes

One of the factors in the recent resurgence of interest in ANZAC Day has been the corresponding decline in mainstream religious participation. In 2005, the New Scientist magazine carried a story about a “religion gene”:

Until about 25 years ago, scientists assumed that religious behaviour was simply the product of a person’s socialisation – or “nurture”. But more recent studies, including those on adult twins who were raised apart, suggest genes contribute about 40% of the variability in a person’s religiousness.

Whatever this actually means in practice, it’s clear that we long to believe in a higher, larger truth than ourselves, and more significantly, to participate in rituals that point to that truth. I think that the resurgence of ANZAC memorials and pilgrimages to Gallipoli has its source in this reality. In short, when the religious life of transcendent traditions¹ declines, civil religions take their place. And that is what the resurgence of ANZAC Day is about – civil religion.

Rituals, processions, remembering the dead, even readings from Christian scripture (addressed in Jarrod’s article) – its all there. Now, my point is not that ceremonies which are not explicitly Christian are bad – of course not, ritual is a part of human life, whether externally religious or not. My problem is that such ceremonies induct us into a positive remembrance of war, verging at times on outright celebration, as we revere Gallipoli as a “national creation story”.

None of what I’m saying here negates these facts: that Australian soldiers possess courage; that we should recognise their suffering and bravery; that it is possible that war, like all hardship, can reveal positives in the human character; and that there should be some sort of ritual to remember these things. I affirm these things, and I admire the courage of those who go to war, even as I do not admire the task they fulfil.

But here we come to the nub of the problem. Australia has begun to see our warring history, and Gallipoli in particular, as emblematic of our character as a nation: a place and time where mateship was birthed, as a model for young people to venerate and aspire to, a place wherein the purifying violence of Suvla Bay a nation was truly formed. I do not affirm these things. I do not believe these things are healthy, because they essentially argue that the violence of war is a stable foundation for human relationships, individual character & vocation, and nationhood.

For Christians who follow a Jesus who died willingly to save the world (rather than kill to save it), any memorialising of war is a challenge to our faith. So what kind of memorial could I participate it? From a Christian point of view, any war is a violation of God’s creation, and God weeps over all those who die, and over all those whose participation in war has damaged them. Therefore I would like to see a memorial that remembers, and recognises, the dead from all the wars that Australia has fought in: from the Boer War through to Afghanistan and Iraq. I would like to see a ritual in which the dead of our enemies are brought to our attention, as well as our own dead. That way, ANZAC Day would truly be a remembrance of the horror of war

I finish with this quote from Jarrod McKenna’s own article:

If we say fighting is wrong, we spit in the face of all those soldiers who have bravely served their countries. But if we say the way to fight is with violence,then like those in Matthew’s passion account, we spit in the face of Christ. Do not judge those who did not know there was a better way. But it is a judgment of our Christianity if we remain silent as our governments sacrifice trillions of dollars and the precious lives of young people on the altar of unwinnable wars.

1. Those religious traditions with a belief in some kind of deity who includes, but also exists outside, human experience

Political Evangelism – the good news in the public sphere
Once upon a time, a young man in Europe was in court. His father, a wealthy textiles businessman, had taken him there because he had stolen some silk from his father’s factory, sold it and used it to fund some property development. During the public hearing, he renounced his father’s wealth, stripped off his clothes and strode away, naked, promising to serve ‘Lady Poverty’.

A while before that, another young man led the respected people of his nation to the rubbish dump, and informed them that they were responsible for a coming catastrophe. He told that they had filled the land with innocent blood, and that in return they would experience a military siege so terrible they would turn to cannibalism of their own families to survive. As a finale, he held a clay pot above his head and smashed it – “This pot is the house of Jerusalem and the house of Judah”.

The first young man was Francis of Assisi, and the second young man is the prophet known as Jeremiah. They were both prefiguring and continuing one of the most common practices of Jesus, which I call Political Evangelism.

Definitions
I realise I am using two words which are contested – often used for many different purposes. So let me define them.

By “political”, I mean:

• That which concerns power  and its use
• That which concerns the public sphere
• It is always personal, but never private (secret)
• I do not mean…’party politics’

By “evangelism”, I mean:

• That which concerns the good news, or the ‘evangel’ (GK) – the good news of God..a word used by the gospel writers to convey the message of the kingdom of God, which they had appropriated from the Caesars, who used the word ‘gospel’ to convey their victory in battle.
• That evangelism includes both a NO and a YES, judgement and mercy, criticism and invitation to a new life.
• Let us try to remove stereotypes of evangelism from our heads.

Political Evangelism, for the purposes of tonight is: Acts of public witness to the good news of God and his reign

Politics and Religion
Tonight I want to explore what place political evangelism might have in the life of the church, and in the interaction of the church with the surrounding public. We are often told that “religion and politics don’t mix”. The witness of the Bible and Christian history says that such a viewpoint is inaccurate, and also impossible. The problem is not that religion and politics mix, it is HOW they mix.

Tonight I will focus on one element of that mix – that of publically declaring (in word and deed) the good news. There are so many others ways that Christians act politically: from letter-writing to the clothes we buy, from how we make decisions in church to how we vote. Every act and decision we make is political, because human life is about allegiance. Who will we be loyal to? is the question to which the Christian answer is “Jesus is Lord”, not simply in a general sense but in a specific sense. Is Jesus our Lord in our finances, our employment, where our kids go to school, the kind of toilet paper we buy, how we produce and eat food etc etc etc .

I don’t have the whole picture, nor do I regularly do what I am going to talk about, but it’s something that I think needs to be thought about in the church, and acted upon. Also, I have my own political persuasions, but this seminar is not meant to be about my particular beliefs. I think that Christians of all political persuasions should be acting publically and politically. Again, the argument is not whether doing so is warranted – the argument is about HOW we do so.

Biblical Examples of Political Evangelism
Apart from the Jeremiah example, there are plenty of biblical instances of public acts of witness:

• Moses and the plagues (Ex 9-10)
• Elijah & the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:20-40)
• Jesus illegally healing on the Sabbath (Matthew 12:9-14)
• Jesus eating illegally on the Sabbath (Mark 2:23-28)
• Triumphal Entry to Jerusalem (John 12:12-15)
• Acts of Apostles: constant examples of healing and preaching in public, often provoking unrest, arrest, imprisonment and sometimes death.

Let us look at 3 of them, and for each I will look at what constitutes these acts of public witness: the setting, the symbols, the showing & telling, the consequences and why they are political and evangelistic acts.

1. Jeremiah 19 – the clay pot

• Setting: deliberately public – he leads the elders and senior priests to the entry of the Potherds Gate (entry to the rubbish dump)….sometimes called the Dung Gate (KJV)
• Symbol: clay pot –  visual as well as verbal; acts of public witness often use symbols to convey a message
• Showing and Telling of God’s judgement upon the idolatry and violence of Judah and Jerusalem:

Because the people have forsaken me, and have profaned this place by making offerings in it to other gods whom neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah have known, and because they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent, and gone on building the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as burnt-offerings to Baal, which I did not command or decree, nor did it enter my mind (Jer 19:4-5)

• Consequences: Jeremiah is imprisoned and ‘struck’ (whipped?)  in chapter 20.
• Political – pitting the powers of Judah and Jerusalem (the elders and priests) against that of God.
• Evangelism – God’s judgement is always for the purpose of God’s eventual mercy and restoration of Israe

2. Matthew 12: 9-14 – illegal healing

• Setting:  the setting is a synagogue on the Sabbath…illegal to do any work on the Sabbath
• Symbol:  the man and his withered hand is the visual method that Jesus uses to demonstrate the heartlessness of the Pharisee’s way.
• Showing & Telling: Jesus commits a crime for 2 reasons: one is to heal the man, but the second is to create a counterargument about the Sabbath and what its purpose is. (see previous story of illegal eating).  Ongoing battle between Jesus and the powers – “…so that they might accuse him” (v. 10b)
• Consequences – the Pharisees conspire to destroy him.
• Political – it is about who has the power to say what is legal, and an ongoing battle of myths between religious leaders and Jesus.
• Evangelism – Jesus is communicating that healing is more important than a law.

3. John 12 – messianic battle
This story is one of the most obvious examples of Jesus acting in public and political way. Let us look at the sequence of story:

1. Enters Jerusalem
2. Hears the crowd’s messianic myth – “King of Israel”….what is a King for them? Violent, restoration of Israel. Look at Jesus reaction to this last time! (John 6:15)
3. Decides to get a donkey
4. Rides it, providing a countervailing myth of what it means to be Messiah

• Public: 6 days before Passover, Jerusalem is filled
• Symbol: donkey, a ridiculing of the stallion, the usual victor’s steed.
• Showing & Telling: Jesus does no telling, but his message is clear – his kingship is different.
• Consequences:  all the people go after him!
• Political – they want him to have power over them, to violently restore Israel
• Evangelism – the good news of a nonviolent Lord

So, in summary, political evangelism:

• Is public – people are watching, they can see us!
• Communicates a message about God and his good news.
• Almost always in conflict with other messages in society which are taken as normative
• Uses symbols to communicate
• Consequences are inevitable, both punitive and positive.
• Nonviolent

Political Evangelism in Christian history

• Telemachus (404): intervening publically in gladiatorial contest
• Francis of Assisi (1205): disrobing to demonstrate non-attachment to possessions
• Martin Luther (1517): nailing theses to the church door
• Civil Rights movement (1960s): counter sit-ins
• Pro life (20^th C): picketing abortion clinics
• Oath Keepers (20^th C): taking public oaths
• Women Christian Temperance Movement (late 19^th C on) : prayer inside saloons
• St Maximilian (295): refused in court to be conscripted and was executed

Political Evangelism Today
When Crown Casino was being established, a small movement existed to call attention to its degrading social effects, and the inappropriate relationship between the government and the casino owners. Each Sunday, we got together outside the site and prayed. We had a banner, and talked to people who approached us. We had T-shirts made up that communicated our message and also used the Crown Casino logo in a humourous way. We had a plenty of verbal abuse hurled at us, but also plenty of people who agreed with us.

I found this to be a good experience, but also a hard one, not least because of the reactions of Christians I spoke to about it. From those conversations, I began to think about the barriers to political evangelism.

Barriers to Political Evangelism
Acting publically and politically is difficult for all of us. There a few key barriers to Christians acting publically and politically.

1. FEAR:

• This includes embarrassment, wanting to avoid criticism or abuse, and the fear of being recognised by someone who may think badly of you.
• These things are absolutely understandable, but are also predicted by Jesus as expected consequences of following him…it may even show that we are on the right track

2. PRIVATISM: this is the belief that religious concerns are separate from political concerns, therefore Christians should keep their faith out of the public sphere.

• As I showed before, faith is a matter of allegiance, and allegiance is a matter of which power we will be loyal to.
• Christian faith is always personal, but it is never private. It is impossible to look at Jesus, and the church of Acts, and conclude that our faith is meant to be kept out of the public sphere.
• Christian faith is not captive to party politics, but that hardly means it is nonpolitical. Again, look at the conflicts Jesus has with the powers of his day; look at the way the apostles come into conflict with the powers of their day.

3. QUIETISM: this is the belief that ‘making a fuss’ in public is unproductive, and that the general public will be alienated from Christianity by public acts of witness.

• It is true that political evangelism will alienate people, as it will attract some people. Jesus predicted this, and demonstrated it in his own ministry. So that’s not an argument against political evangelism
• The question I would ask is – When has our social conformity assisted the church?
• Nonconformism was the order of the day in the early church, and that attracted people!
• I’m not arguing to be nonconformist unthinkingly, but for us, the church, to be our true selves, and not worry so much about what the world thinks
• Quietism is actually a product of the Christendom worldview, in which state and church gave each other power. The  church didn’t want to rock the boat because it had that power. Well, now we don’t have it! Let’s enjoy the freedom!

4. THE POWERS AND FAITH

• The most insidious reason we don’t want to do Political Evangelism is that we believe that the powers of state and corporations are basically in sympathy with the aims of the church, that we are walking arm in arm, that we basically have the same idea of what a ‘good’ society is.
• Now, if you believe that, then there is no reason for you to think about Political Evangelism.
• But if we don’t believe that – that is, if we believe that the aims of the community of Jesus are in conflict with the aims of political and economic powers, then we need to use every weapon in our arsenal to bring that conflict to light.

Conclusion
Public witness to God’s kingdom is clear throughout the Bible and in Christian history. The questions is not whether to do it, because that has been answered, the questions are WHEN and HOW.

I’m not going to give it to you because this post is not about the rightness of the sentence (the young man is obviously a danger to others) but about the media’s role. The newspaper is tabloid-sized, and this story completely covered the front page with a photo of the man, plus his name in the headline. I realise that, given he is 18 and had pleaded guilty, his face and name can be published. The newspaper acted legally, but did they act ethically?

As we go beyond the headlines, we find that this man’s father was killed in a car accident 10 years ago. Suddenly he transforms in our eyes from a 19 year old hoon to a 9 year old boy discovering his father is no longer alive. Any superficial study of youth development tells us that parents, particularly fathers, are key to a young boy becoming a responsible adult. A $65,000 payout from the TAC was put in a trust fund after this accident. At age 18, the boy promptly wasted it in a predictable stream of prodigality. I think we can confidently assume that this boy has not had the opportunity to develop in a healthy way.

This newspaper’s actions are unethical. There is no public benefit served in publishing this story in this way.  There is no benefit to the man found guilty. There is no deterrent effect, because any other so-called ‘hoon’ will see this as a special case because of his father’s death. The only effect is to stir up ill-feeling towards young people. Of course, this is not an isolated occurrence in the media. Young people doing stupid & criminal things are constantly in the news. In youth and social work this is called a ‘deficit approach’, in which the media chooses to highlight negative characteristics of young people. On page 13 of the same newspaper, Father Chris Riley (right) from Youth off the Streets spoke to 300 young people about leadership and character….putting that on the front page would have been fantastic.

Publishing this story is legitimate, but allow an obviously damaged young person the privacy needed to rehabilitate.

In one sense, I am glad that someone has been caught. The stupidity and malice of lighting a fire on that day is obvious, and I still recall with fear making my home safe and helping neighbours as the fire burned in Long Gully.

The lives are lost, the houses are burned, the land is scorched. Those things have happened and cannot be undone. People are rebuilding their homes and communities are licking their wounds together, and beginning to recover. It has been a time of unprecedented cooperation, imbued with a generous spirit.

As well as being a Long Gully resident, I am also a youth worker. I know many of the local young people, and their families, and I am checking through them in my mind, wondering if it is one of them. The condemnation that will rain down upon them and their families will be harsh.

As these 2 young people come to the Bendigo courthouse today, I pray that a spirit of pity would be there. It would be easy for us to persecute, rather than simply prosecute, these 2 young people.

Hear me clearly; if they are found guilty, they deserve punishment. Justice must be done. But it needs to be the kind of punishment, and the kind of justice, that restores them as full members of our community, with a sense of responsibility and care towards it, so that they may never again harm our community. If we persecute and punish them beyond repair, they will hurt others in return. Somehow, we need to discipline with love, a difficult task but we have seen the courage and strength that Victorians have. Let us bring that same courage and strength to our enemies.

I would say to my daughters, if they were to ask me this question, I would say … it is the greatest gift that you can give someone, the ultimate gift of giving and don’t give it to someone lightly, that is what I would say.

The slapdown from the media and in the political arena was fairly rapid. Julia Gillard: “These comments will confirm the worst fears of Australian women about Tony Abbott”. Gabriella Coslovich in The Age: “If I were one of Abbott’s daughters I would be furious to have my value reduced to the state of my hymen”. Most of the responses centred on the desirability of bonking whoever you like without criticism.

Tony Abbott was trapped by the fact that politicians, like every public figure these days, must engage on a personal level as well as a political level. To challenge Labor, he must be liked by the Australian people, as well as having attractive policies. Hence the Women’s Weekly interview. However, Abbott’s insistence that the piece was a ‘personal’ and ‘not political’ doesn’t stand up either because the only reason we care is because he is a politician. Most of the hysteria whipped up on his comments is simply fluff that we can safely ignore. Many commentators simply don’t like Tony. Abbott is an abrasive politician, and those opposed to him will take any opportunity to denigrate him. This is to be expected, and Abbott shouldn’t be surprised. But there are a couple of interesting issues touched on in this episode.

The first is Is it valid for politicians to comment on so-called ‘private’ matters? I argue that not only is it valid, it should be positively encouraged. I want to know what my political representatives actually think, not just rely on carefully controlled media releases. One of the attractive things about Tony Abbott (bar budgie smugglers) is the unscripted nature of his public appearances. That could be spin too, but I prefer it to the airbrushed image that Rudd conveys. Added to this is the artificial separation between private and public issues. Rudd referred to this in his response to Abbott, opining that governments should focus on health, climate change and war-mongering, and leave the ‘private’ issues to individuals. I assume he means that sex is a private issue. That didn’t stop him writing a long essay on his religious faith before the election.

These issues are ‘personal’ but they are not ‘private’ in the sense of having no public interest. All relationships, including sexual ones, have to deal with the public dimension, even if it extends only to excluding the public. In fact, our definition of what is ‘private’ and therefore off-limits to politicians, god-botherers and in-laws, is quite fluid. For some, our voting choices are strictly private (though regulated by government), for others it’s our bank balance (though regulated by government), for others it’s our eating habits (though regulated by government). For others it’s our choice of school (though regulated by government). All our supposedly private choices are regulated to some degree by government. Even, yes, sex is regulated by government.

So, to get down the root of it all, the real issue is not whether politicians should comment on ‘private’ issues, but Should government regulate relationships? And how should they be regulated? And, for the god-botherers like me, is there any validity in trying to persuade such regulation on the basis of my religiously-grounded beliefs?…stay tuned

For those of you who know me a bit, you will have heard me rave about “The Social Entrepeneur”, a book by Andrew Mawson, an English clergyman who turned his decrepit church into a centre for social enterprises – initiatives that are based on the following principle:

We know that every human being has a unique talent. By applying these talents in local communities it is possible to make them strong and vibrant instead of soulless and “deprived”. What matters is backing people before structures.

Andrew sought out people in his disadvantaged area who were passionate about an idea, and supported them to get it going as a business. I cried when I read his book. It wasn’t sad, rather the joy and hope that sang through his stories got to my heart. He was describing truly Christian community development.

Welfare Mentality vs Social Entrepreneurship
One of the sad things about Christian community work is that it often gets dependent on handouts, just like the people it aims to serve. Once dependent, we stick with programs that will ensure the transfusion of funds that we need. We eventually find we have strayed from our original purpose. We internalise the same Welfare Mentality that afflicts many of those we serve and become unable to break free of its bonds.

Social Entrepreneurship rejects this way of being and working. It starts with what people are passionate about, not what gains funding. It supports that passion, but always with the aim of self-sufficiency. I think this is incredibly important in poorer communities, because independence from outside help breeds confidence, dignity, responsibility and generosity. The constant supply of government benefits, cheaper housing, food handouts etc breeds apathy, boredom and self-loathing.

The Kingdom & Social Entrepreneurship
The links between God’s reign and social entrepreneurship need to be teased out. But some preliminary thoughts are:

• God created humans with passions and desires to create. Social Entrepreneurship taps into those passions and desires, whereas Welfare Mentality drains passion and desire from a person.
• Dependence, as in Welfare Mentality, is the flip side of domination. God did not create people to be dependent on others, but interdependent. Social Entrepreneurship enables people, especially the poor, to contribute to others as well as receive.
• God created humans with the need to give. Welfare Mentality focusses on receiving, which makes us bloated and unhealthy. The gospel motivates us to give, and when we do we find that feel more human than ever.

More to think about here…

But for now, if in Geelong go to Urban Bean, and if you want to support Bike Butcher, buy a cool fixie.

A young couple (Leonardo di Caprio and Kate Winslet) are brought together by their dissatisfaction with the American dream. They marry and plan to move to France, an exciting plan they share with their jealous friends. The plot consists of this plan painfully unravelling, unmasking their true desires.

Revolutionary Road is parabolic. In Jesus’ parables, we are sucked into the world of the story, which is then given a twist that shakes us into a new way of seeing reality. The classic in this tradition is the Good Samaritan. The wounded traveller is passed by the priest and levite, whose distancing reaction to a possibly dead (and therefore unclean) body in totally understandable within Jewish culture. The listeners are lulled into the story, waiting for the 3rd person to come along, who will provide a punchline – and the punchline is a Samaritan, the epitome of uncleanness.

In the same way, we dream with the couple of Revolutionary Road, encouraged that they are breaking from the stifles of hack job, domestic trivia and superficial relationships. I found myself (perhaps naively) willing them on as they bought the tickets and prepared to fly. And I found myself experiencing the same heartbreak as their plans fall apart, mainly due to the husband’s bluster which hides an insecure man.

He is the villain of the piece, as he inspires his wife with dreams of a heaven outside their current drudgery, and then refuses to follow through. The film is a tragedy, and the last few scenes are painful in their inevitability.

After returning a young man to his residential unit (where he lives), his 2 housemates both started mooning our car, despite the best efforts of their workers to raise the level of the conversation and their shorts.

What we give to get noticed! I get noticed all the time, having a job that involves facilitation and training groups, but I always like it. As a secondary school teacher, I found that young people were always trying to get noticed: through acting up, excelling at something. Even those people who seem to love hiding away in a corner so no-one mentions their existence appreciate quiet acknowledgement.

It’s not just young people and children who love attention, though. Adults seem to thrive on it. I know I do. I think it comes back to the fact that we are mostly cowards. When people notice our efforts it gives us the courage to keep going.